DEMO PedalPCB Aurum Drive (Friedman Golden Pearl)

This post contains an audio or video demo

MichaelW

Well-known member
Build Rating
5.00 star(s)
....as opposed to the AionFX "Aurum" which is a Boss pedal.

I remember seeing Pete Thorn do a demo of this pedal a while ago and remember liking it. So I ordered the board to give it a whirl.

Cool pedal. Basically a YATS without the buffers. But it's got some little tricks up the sleeve.

I think it's best use case is to push an already dirty amp as opposed to a standalone drive.

There's a couple of clipping options with one side of the toggle being 3mm Yellow LEDs and the other with the standard complement of 1N4148's.
Middle position is no clippers with just opamp boost/drive.

The other toggle has a couple of HPF caps with two levels of hi cut and the middle position with no cut. It's a fairly bright pedal without the Hi cut.

The demo also is the first appearance of my latest Strat build, the "Firemistress".

This still needs some fretwork to dial in yet but it needs to sit under tension for another week or so before I do the final set up. You can hear a bit of fret buzz here and there.

The pickups currently in the guitar are also the temporary pickups that's a bit of a Frankenstein set. As I mentioned in my build thread for this guitar I'm still waiting for a set of pickups from Onamac Windery that's supposed to be inspired by David Gilmour's strat tone. It's essentially a 54 vintage output A5 neck pickup, a 60's style A5 middle and a super hot A2 bridge (12.5k). Sounds pretty interesting.

In order to get the guitar playing, I bought a set of GFS pickups. I got their "Premium Texas Set" that sort of approximates the Onamac set in that it's a vintage output neck and middle with an overwound bridge (9.4k). Except that the bridge pickup is dead. I can see the problem, there's a break in the wire right at the pad on the baseplate. I'm debating whether to repair it or exchange it. It looks like a pretty simple fix.

In the meantime I had an extra very old GFS bridge pickup that I've had for ages. It's wound to 7.5k so it's nowhere near as hot as the broken pickup, but it seems to fit the set well for a more traditional vintage set. I'm actually quite impressed with the sound of the pickups. As it's currently configured it's very 50's sounding. Lots of chime and articulation. Not much in the mid's and not a lot of grunt. But still very pleasant sounding.

These will eventually go into another Strat that I'll be putting together with all the spare parts I have lying around.

Anyway, the Aurum is a cool TS variant and I can see it really fitting into the heavier rock sounds pushing a Marshall type amp.

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Sounds nice. Yellow LEDs seem to be working well, I need to try infrared ones like Betty mentioned in another thread.

Always find your playing so relaxing and effortless. I want to see you really strangle the guitar one day and make nasty, screaming sounds with it. Maybe you need an SG for that..
 
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